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U.S. faces test in economy, virus policies after Bloomberg ranks it No.1 in COVID-19 resilience

U.S. is listed on the top in the latest COVID Resilience Ranking released by Bloomberg while the country is lagging behind in its recovery and still facing serious COVID-19 fight.

U.S. jumped from 13th in June to the top of the list as Bloomberg introduced new index of Reopening Progress with four new indicaters including people covered by vaccines, lockdown severity, flight capacity and vaccinated travel routes.

High vaccination rate yet pace slows

Bloomberg’s chart shows 50.3 percent of people in U.S. are covered by vaccines based on the current number of doses administered and the mix of vaccine types used. The U.S. is ranked at fifth on the list after United Arab Emirates, Israel, Chile, and the UK.

However, the U.S. has officially fallen short of its goal to vaccinate enough people as of July 4. In addition, the country also saw a slowdown of the vaccination rate as people’s hesitation grew.

In several southern states, such as Mississippi and Louisiana, have both of their total and adult vaccination rates below 50 percent, way lagging behind the national average.

The hesitancy of vaccine safety and the lack of health infrastructure in the south keep the residents away from being vaccinated.

Soft travel policy spells risk of infection

The high vaccination rate may reflect its ease on lockdown severity – it scores 47 while almost 30 out of total 53 economies on the list are rated more severe in lockdown by scores of over 60.

The country also scores high in vaccinated travel routes, an indicator showing how many open travel routes, suggesting a country’s openness and vitality to some degree. U.S. has 334 vaccinated travel routes among 14 economies on the list reaching over 300 by the index.

Data from Johns Hopkins University shows that an average of 19,455 new cases has been reported in the U.S. in the past seven days. As of Monday, there were 33.8 million COVID-19 cases and over 600,000 deaths in the country, according to Global Times.

Hidden danger in economy

America’s openness doesn’t help boost its flight capacity enough as the provision of plane seats in the latest available four-week period compared with the same period in 2019 is still down by 20.1 percent.

Instead, China has already rebounded from its COVID-19 fight as its domestic tourism recovered strongly when the economy resumed without being affected by the small virus flareups. China’s flight capacity even increased by 1.7 percent compared to the same period in 2019.

Also, the inflation risk is surging in the U.S. after a series of economic stimulus measures. American consumers could face price jumps in an array of sectors from gasoline to food and transportation. Moreover, a nationwide labor shortage and increasing operational costs could also push the inflation to a higher level.
Source: CGTN

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